Workers act to avoid business closures

The article, ”Workers act to avoid business closures,” is primarily about how the workers in the UK support their employees during the economic crisis. The author, Graham Snowdown, outlines the measurements of how the laborers bear their entrepreneurs by accepting unpaid overtime, a pay freeze, or no pay rise. All in all, 53% of the workforce accepted one thing or another in order to avoid losing their job. In comparison to former recessions, like in the 1990s, employers keep in mind that to lay-off workers actually leads to the fact that they become desperate or unhappy. In terms of motivation and productivity, this would be not preferable. Even though some companies follow this quite new approach, I would like to relate this article to Adam Smith and his ideas concerning labor unions.

Adam Smith recognized that there is fundamental imbalance between laborers and their employers. He claimed that the society would have no laws to lower the price of work but enough laws not to raise it. Finally, he mentioned that a worker should be as valuable to the employer as the employer is to the worker. Thus, some companies realized that this fact might be an important point to consider, not because of social responsibility but rather to increase productivity. The problem in this matter is that employers have tremendous power over individual workers. They can hire and fire, set work hours and wages, create rules and control working hours. For that reason, labor unions are useful in order to give the worker a voice. The unions are able to protect the worker and can, for instance, negotiate wages and working hours. In conclusion, one can say that the voluntary behavior of corporations, like in this article, is a good approach, but labor unions are needed.